Spaciously presented across more than 2,000 square metres in Hamburger Bahnhof’s Rieckhallen, the group exhibition Magical Soup features key works complemented by loans representing the latest generation of artists, with a common point of departure being the nexus of sound, image and social space.

Music has the power to create imaginary worlds. Sounds can physically shake up rooms. And images can conjure up auditory spaces that draw us beyond canvases and screens. Magical Soup explores the power and the magic with which images, sound, music, and language create, reveal or hide reality. The works range between precise observation, radical self-expression, and deliberate deconstruction of identity.

A Spectacle of Media Art

The Nationalgalerie has one of the most extensive museum collections of media art in Europe. Its holdings of important historical video art have been supplemented over the last few years by exceptional time-based works of recent origin. Magical Soup brings together works by the media art pioneers Nam June Paik, Jochen Gerz, Charlemagne Palestine, Ulrike Rosenbach and Keiichi Tanaami; by the multimedia artists Nevin Aladağ, Stan Douglas, Cyprien Gaillard, Douglas Gordon, Rodney Graham, Dmitry Gutov, Anne Imhof, Joan La Barbara, Pipilotti Rist, Diana Thater, Lawrence Weiner, Nicole Wermers and David Zink Yi; and by the younger artists Korakrit Arunanondchai, Trisha Baga, Dineo Seshee Bopape, Christine Sun Kim, Sandra Mujinga and Sung Tieu.

The exhibition is accompanied by a publication with texts by Anna-Catharina Gebbers, Chloe Stead and Jessica Lauren Elizabeth Taylor. Among the online offers, a series of video contributions with artist’s talks and exhibition films about Magical Soup has been produced to accompany the exhibition. 

A special exhibition of the Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.